Treasure hunter found £1m haul on first outing

An amateur treasure hunter discovered a hoard of Iron Age gold worth more than
£1 million on his first outing with a metal detector

David Booth: The safari park warden parked his car by field in Stirlingshire and made the find after taking just a few paces. Photo: GETTY

By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent

2:54PM GMT 04 Nov 2009

David Booth, 35, bought the £240 detector online because he thought it “might be fun” to look for treasure and struck gold just five days after it was delivered.

The safari park warden parked his car by field in Stirlingshire and made the find after taking just a few paces.

Three of the necklaces or “torcs” are in almost perfect condition and one, which shows signs of Mediterranean craftsmanship, is of a type never seen before in Britain.

Mr Booth said he had not studied archaeology but knew there were some ancient sites in the area and was given permission by a local landowner to try out his new detector.

Until then he had only used the device around his home – detecting knives and forks in the kitchen - to familiarise himself with it.

He set out on his day off on September 29 and was back home within an hour with Scotland’s biggest find of Iron Age gold.

Speaking at the unveiling of the torcs at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh yesterday he said he started in one particular field only because the owner said he could.

He added: “I parked and decided I might as well start on some flat ground just behind the car.

“I had only gone about seven paces when I got a sound telling me that I may have found gold. I used a spade and found the torcs together only six to eight inches underground.

“Half of me thought I had found something very interesting and half of me thought it might just be children’s toys. It is absolutely unreal.”

Mr Booth, chief game warden at the Blair Drummond Safari Park outside Stirling, took the artefacts home and washed them in cold water.

Some quick online research suggested to him that he may have found important items from the 1st to 3rd centuries BC – 200 years before the Romans arrived in Britain.

He filled in a form on the Scottish Treasure Trove website and sent a photograph to the unit at the national museum. Members of staff opened the email the following morning and were at the secret site within three hours.

They have since excavated the area, which shows signs of an Iron Age building, but revealed no more treasure.

The Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel is now valuing the items and Mr Booth will receive the market value for them.

His girlfriend Carolyn Morrison, 28, who also works at the safari park, was at home when he returned with the treasure but “couldn’t believe” that he had found something so important.

He added: "I've no clue how much this lot is worth. People are talking about a million pounds and that would be lovely, but Carolyn is expecting our first child in February and it would be nice just to pay off the Ford Focus."

He is already resigned to the fact that he is unlikely to find anything as exciting again.

Experts said the gold necklaces would "revolutionise the way Scotland's Iron Age inhabitants were viewed, and proved they were much less isolated than previously believed.

Fraser Hunter, principal curator for Iron Age and Roman collections, said the craftsmanship of one of the torcs - a hoop made of multiple gold wires twisted together with ornate decorations and gold terminals - suggested it was made by someone who learned his craft in the Mediterranean and combined the style with local Scottish/Irish designs.

He added: "It's a missing link. It's the first time we've seen one that combines these two styles.”

There are also two gold ribbon torcs, of Scottish/Irish design, and a fourth torc which is broken but probably comes from Toulouse in southern France.